


Gonna take a bit of work

by lovestillaround



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, M/M, talking about hiatus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21778663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovestillaround/pseuds/lovestillaround
Summary: Dan thinks about perfectionism and what he wants in life
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 15
Kudos: 37





	Gonna take a bit of work

Breaking the rules has always felt quite freeing. Boyfriend? Hell yeah. YouTube? Absolutely. Dropping out of university? No problem. (It was a problem. It was a harrowing experience.)

Yet, there are rules that he can’t bring himself to break. The worst thing is that he established all those rules himself, ages ago, and has stuck to them since. He’s his own biggest enemy, in every way, truly.

*

He can’t multi-task, so he has put everything on hold. No gaming videos, no lighter and funnier main channel videos, no liveshows, pretty much no Instagram stories, tweets rather rarely. It’s easy to get used to this routine. It’s easy to forget that people have any expectations.

It’s easy to forget that people can’t see you through the walls of your house, that they don’t see that you’re working. They don’t experience the same disappointment when a project gets cancelled or delayed, and they don’t know, they just don’t know how much work you’re putting into simply staying afloat every day.

He’s still scared of everything breaking. He has dreams of his fish dying, and he listens to his boyfriend’s retelling of similar nightmares, and he wonders why everything can’t just be okay.

*

“You need to stop,” he says to Phil when he overworks himself, when he spends yet another evening working – editing, writing, e-mailing, researching, planning, making sure that everything goes according to those plans, and worrying. Can worrying be a form of work? He isn’t sure, but he still counts it as such.

So he tells Phil – _please, take a break; come, sit with me, I’ll make us coffee and we will watch something light and unengaging._ And they do it, and then Phil says that Dan is sweet to him, or maybe he just puts Dan’s feet into his lap, or maybe he kisses him, and then Dan knows that this is love. They have learned how to be good at taking care of each other, and it might be even his favourite form of showing affection.

*

He makes them both coffee so often that Phil confronts him about it one day.

“Maybe I like coffee because you like coffee,” Dan simply says.

Phil looks at him, seemingly confused. “We don’t have one brain yet.”

“Maybe I like coffee because it tastes like you.”

Phil laughs. “That doesn’t make any sense. It’s me who tastes like coffee, coffee doesn’t taste like me.”

Dan just shakes his head.

“I’m not the centre of the universe, Dan.” Phil does this thing where he raises his eyebrows as he talks, and his gaze is piercing and unmoving.

“Maybe you are the centre of my universe.” Dan says. He feels vulnerable all of the sudden, so he protectively grabs the edges of the blanket resting in his lap and covers himself with it up to his chin.

“What?” Phil squeaks. He looks at Dan with such surprise that Dan wants to just roll his eyes.

“You’ve heard what I told you,” he grumbles.

“Gross,” is all Phil has to say. Still, he leans in for a kiss so eagerly as if he’s just heard the best pick-up line ever.

 _Morosexual_ , Dan thinks but doesn’t say it aloud. His mouth is now busy anyway.

*

Telling jokes, telling stories, telling the story of his own life, being alive, being alive for real and being alive for the show. Sometimes he thinks he’s only good at some of these things.

Right now he’s good at staying home, trying to be invisible. Kind of.

*

He wants people to see that he’s trying, that he’s working, that he’s putting effort into doing things. He wants people to know that he hasn’t quit.

What he wants too is the domestic bliss. He wants to sit in their living room under a blanket, look at their Christmas tree and feel like a child. He wants to feel calm, cook a dinner with Phil and eat it, and flirt with him in the meanwhile as if it’s a date (because why couldn’t it be?). He wants to touch Phil’s leg with his toes under the table and get teased for it.

*

Work gets in his way of enjoying the homely life. He watches Phil doing so many things that sometimes it makes him jealous. He knows that it’s irrational because he’s free to decide how much content he’s putting out there, and he knows that he could be producing so much more of that content if he just lowered the standards he’s holding himself to.

The thing is, he doesn’t want it.

If he’s putting effort into things, he needs to make sure that he’s doing his best, that his work is free of mistakes, that it truly reflects what he thinks and who he is, and that it won’t make him cringe in five years.

It’s easier with things like radio and conference panels and interviews – he needs to think and act quickly, he has no time to dwell on whether what he’s saying is clever or funny or formulated in a way that doesn’t annoy anyone. When he’s working on a video, he has time to overthink. He has more than enough time to start doubting himself and everything he does.

*

When he’s working at home, he has time to do other things. He has more distractions.

Once, he gets up to get something to drink and ends up watching Phil wiping the floor in the kitchen and humming to himself. He sees him stepping on the tiles he’s just cleaned, and Dan could shake his head in disapproval, but he only smiles instead.

*

“Don’t tell me you’ve just put on Riverdale.”

“Norman likes it,” Phil says and pouts, and Dan doesn’t have the heart to argue with him.

He sits down next to Phil and leans onto him. He stares at the television screen, not really paying attention to what’s happening there, instead enjoying this moment of peace. The warmth radiating from Phil’s shoulder tells him to not worry about anything right now.

When at one point he looks behind, he sees Norman gazing at the screen too. He’s by the glass, he lets out a few air bubbles from his blue mouth, and Dan smiles at him.

He can pretend that Norman knows what it means.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr post](https://lovestillaround.tumblr.com/post/189644071013/gonna-take-a-bit-of-work-rating-g-words-1k-tags)


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